Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu invoked the Armenian Genocide at the United Nations General Assembly on Thursday to attack Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, calling him a “tyrant” and a genocide denier as the confrontation between the two governments escalated on the world’s largest diplomatic stage.
“Erdogan is a tyrant,” Netanyahu said in his address to the 81st session. “He also hosts Hamas terror chiefs. He has murdered thousands of Kurdish civilians. He denies the Armenian genocide. He jails journalists and opposition leaders. In fact, I think he holds the world record on this.” He went on to accuse Erdogan of illegally occupying northern Cyprus, transgressing against Greece, and seeking to take over Syria.
The charge lands differently for Armenians than Netanyahu intended. In July, Israeli media reported that Netanyahu had personally blocked the Knesset vote that would have turned his own government’s recognition of the Armenian Genocide into binding law. The recognition, unanimously approved by Israel’s cabinet on June 28, was pulled from the parliamentary agenda before the summer recess after Azerbaijan intervened on behalf of its ally Turkey.
Hikmet Hajiyev, foreign policy adviser to Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, confirmed on Turkish television in August that Baku contacted Israel to demand the recognition be dropped, calling it a “red line” taken to protect the interests of “brotherly Turkey.” Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar, who had championed the recognition, saw the measure die without a vote.
So the same prime minister who blocked Israel’s recognition of the Armenian Genocide after Azerbaijan’s intervention stood two months later at the UN and attacked Erdogan for denying it. For Armenians, the murder of 1.5 million of their ancestors, a genocide Netanyahu will name to wound Erdogan and bury to please Baku, surfaced again as a weapon rather than a wrong to be answered.
Netanyahu’s remarks came during the General Assembly’s high-level week, with the war in Gaza dominating the proceedings. Dozens of delegates walked out as he took the podium, some jeering, and Netanyahu told those leaving that any remaining “moral cowards” should go as well.
Erdogan had addressed the same Assembly two days earlier, placing Gaza at the center of his speech and condemning Israel’s conduct against Palestinians, which he has repeatedly called genocide.
Netanyahu is campaigning ahead of Israel’s October 27 elections, the same vote whose approach let the Armenian Genocide recognition die in the Knesset. The recognition his own cabinet passed stays buried, and the genocide he cited from the UN podium remains officially unrecognized by the state he leads.
